Commended also by the Baron are “The Story of a Violin,” by ERNEST DOWSON, and “Heera Nund,” by F.A.  STEEL, in Macmillan.  If “A First Family of Tasajara” is continued as well as it is commenced in the same above-mentioned Mac-azine, it will be about as good a tale as BRET HARTE has ever written, and that is saying a good deal, mind you.

Unfinished Stories—­that is, Stories finished in style, yet, as another contradiction in terms, short stories without any end, are rather the vogue nowadays in Magazines.  Let me recommend as specimens “Francesca’s Revenge” in Blackwood, and “Disillusioned” in London Society.

Don’t tell the Baron that these hints are unappreciated.  He knows better.  He can produce letters imploring him to read and notice, letters asking him what to read, and letters complaining that his advice is not more frequently given.  Aware of this responsibility, he never recommends what he has not himself read, or what some trusted partner in the Firm of BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co. has not read for him. Verb. sap.

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS.

* * * * *

MISS DECIMA-HELYETT-SMITHSON-JACKSON.

One or two of the especially well-informed dramatic critics who, of course, had seen the original piece Miss Helyett in Paris, asked why the English adapter had taken the trouble to invent nine sisters for the heroine; the nine sisters never being seen and having nothing whatever to do with the plot.  Here the well-informed ones were to a certain extent wrong.  In the original French piece, Miss Helyett,—­whose name, as is suggested by Woman, is evidently a French rendering for “Miss ELLIOT,” which M. BOUCHERON “concluded was her Christian name”—­speaking of herself, says to her father, “Vous savez bien, mon pere, que vous n’avez pas de plus grande admiratrice que votre onzieme enfant.” And the Reverend SMITHSON tells her, a little later, “J’ai case toutes tes soeurs tres jeunes—­” and “Je ne devrais pourtant pas avoir de peine a trouver un onzieme gendre.”

[Illustration:  “Oh, shocking!!”]

That is why he is travelling to get an “onzieme gendre” for his “onzieme enfant.”  The English adapter relieved Mr. SMITHSON of one of his family, and so Miss Helyett Smithson became Miss Decima Jackson, i.e., the tenth, instead of the eleventh, of the worthy pastor’s family.  The fact that all her sisters are married, makes single unblessedness a reproach to her.  No sort of purpose would have been served by such a wholesale massacre of innocents as the extinction of all Pastor Smithson’s, alias Jackson’s, ten “pretty chicks at one fell swoop.”